Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde

Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde

Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde

Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde

Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde

Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde

One might question the extent to which Dr. Jekyll and
Mr. Hyde are in fact a single character. Until the end of the novel,
the two personas seem nothing alike—the well-liked, respectable
doctor and the hideous, depraved Hyde are almost opposite in type
and personality. Stevenson uses this marked contrast to make his
point: every human being contains opposite forces within him or
her, an alter ego that hides behind one's polite facade. Correspondingly,
to understand fully the significance of either Jekyll or Hyde, we
must ultimately consider the two as constituting one single character.
Indeed, taken alone, neither is a very interesting personality;
it is the nature of their interrelationship that gives the novel
its power.

Despite the seeming diametric opposition between Dr. Jekyll
and Mr. Hyde, their relationship in fact involves a complicated
dynamic. While it is true that Jekyll largely appears as moral and
decent, engaging in charity work and enjoying a reputation as a
courteous and genial man, he in fact never fully embodies virtue
in the way that Hyde embodies evil. Although Jekyll undertakes his
experiments with the intent of purifying his good side from his
bad and vice versa, he ends up separating the bad alone, while leaving
his former self, his Jekyll-self, as mixed as before. Jekyll succeeds
in liberating his darker side, freeing it from the bonds of conscience,
yet as Jekyll he never liberates himself from this darkness.

Jekyll's partial success in his endeavors warrants much
analysis. Jekyll himself ascribes his lopsided results to his state
of mind when first taking the potion. He says that he was motivated
by dark urges such as ambition and pride when he first drank the
liquid and that these allowed for the emergence of Hyde. He seems
to imply that, had he entered the experiment with pure motives,
an angelic being would have emerged. However, one must consider
the subsequent events in the novel before acquitting Jekyll of any
blame. For, once released, Hyde gradually comes to dominate both
personas, until Jekyll takes Hyde’s shape more often than his own.
Indeed, by the very end of the novel, Jekyll himself no longer exists
and only Hyde remains. Hyde seems to possess a force more powerful
than Jekyll originally believed. The fact that Hyde, rather than
some beatific creature, emerged from Jekyll’s experiments seems
more than a chance event, subject to an arbitrary state of mind.
Rather, Jekyll’s drinking of the potion seems almost to have afforded
Hyde the opportunity to assert himself. It is as if Hyde, but no
comparable virtuous essence, was lying in wait.

This dominance of Hyde—first as a latent force within
Jekyll, then as a tyrannical external force subverting Jekyll—holds
various implications for our understanding of human nature. We begin
to wonder whether any aspect of human nature in fact stands as a counter
to an individual’s Hyde-like side. We may recall that Hyde is described
as resembling a “troglodyte,” or a primitive creature; perhaps Hyde
is actually the original, authentic nature of man, which has been
repressed but not destroyed by the accumulated weight of civilization,
conscience, and societal norms. Perhaps man doesn’t have two natures
but rather a single, primitive, amoral one that remains just barely
constrained by the bonds of civilization. Moreover, the novel suggests
that once those bonds are broken, it becomes impossible to reestablish
them; the genie cannot be put back into the bottle, and eventually
Hyde will permanently replace Jekyll—as he finally does. Even in
Victorian England—which considered itself the height of Western
civilization—Stevenson suggests that the dark, instinctual side
of man remains strong enough to devour anyone who, like Jekyll,
proves foolish enough to unleash it.